In the decades that followed, Chicago's Sister City program inched forward, going about its business of cultural crosspollination. A generation of authors and dance troupes were imported, pen pals found and students exchanged, all below the radar of most Chicagoans.

By the time Daley's son, Richard M. Daley, became mayor in 1989, our Sister City count had grown to eight. But the program remained somewhat of a civic backwater.

Then, ever the economic animal, the younger Daley saw a chance to score some foreign markets for the international city he envisioned Chicago becoming.

In the past 12 years, he has overseen almost hyperpituitary growth in the Sister City program. Fourteen new Sister Cities have been added to create a veritable sorority house of 22 sisters -- one more than the equally acquisitive Los Angeles has, and way more than New York's puny total of six.

Under Daley II, the little-program-that-could has become emblematic of this multiethnic, multinational city, a city that has come to the realization that economic, educational, health and ecological issues are, in fact, global matters that can be approached collaboratively. But the program's explosive growth also seems to betoken an urban area so motivated by the lure of greenbacks that home-town novelist Nelson Algren once christened it the "City on the Make."

The concept of Sister Cities began in the aftermath of World War II when the Eisenhower administration hit upon the deceptively simple-sounding idea that diplomacy on a people-to-people basis might help build a lasting peace.

When Richard J. Daley hitched up with Warsaw, it was a logical first sister, given Chicago's Polish ties. But other ethnic groups here were slow to jump on to the crosscultural bandwagon. The next Sister Cities didn't come along until 13 years later with Osaka and Milan.

The fourth city to sign on -- Casablanca -- was a surprise in that it had no substantial local connection. Mayor Jane Byrne welcomed the Moroccan city to the family in 1982. Then came Shanghai and Shenyang, China, in 1985; Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1987; and Accra, Ghana, in 1989.

1990 a watershed year

But the watershed year was 1990. That's when the program took off -- like a well-connected Chicagoan chasing an airport contract.

In February of that year, Daley placed the program under the administration of the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, headed then and now by Lois Weisberg. He also established a board of directors that meets quarterly in the Cultural Center and began aggressively seeking financial exchanges in what had up to then been primarily a cultural program.

In short order, Prague became the ninth city to come aboard, followed by Toronto; Mexico City; Kyiv, Ukraine; Vilnius, Lithuania; Birmingham, England; Petach Tikva, Israel; Hamburg, Germany; Paris; Galway, Ireland; Durban, South Africa; Athens; Moscow; and Lucerne, Switzerland -- all in one decade.

Chicago now has almost half as many Sister Cities as it has wards. The combined metropolitan populations of all those cities is well over 100 million people -- equivalent to the 10th most populous country in the world. They girdle the entire globe. As was said of the British Empire at its height, the sun literally never sets on Chicago's Sister City network.

But the question, of course, arises: What do we in Chicago get from our sisters?

Is the program out of control? Can one city realistically have close ties to 22 other ones?

Lotti Ross, program director at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, has an upbeat assessment.

Positives outweigh negatives

"The Sister Cities program seems a very effective and wonderful thing for Chicago," she said. "It brings foreign business people and tourists here as well as artists and scientists. Those contacts are very valuable. I don't see anything negative about the program."

The Chicago Sister Cities program now has a director and nine full-time and two part-time staff members. In 2001, through its various committees, it will disburse well over $1 million in funds raised mostly from local corporations and individuals. The cost to the taxpayers this year will be $399,000. Chicagoans will shoulder $114,000 of that from the Cultural Affairs budget while out-of-towners will primarily supply the remaining $255,000 in hotel/motel tax receipts.

The process by which other municipalities become our Sister Cities might seem murky, even mysterious. But Julie Driscoll, director of the program, explained the process this way: